The herculean task of bringing Stephen King’s epic tale of The Gunslinger in The Dark Tower is well under way, and some news has just surfaced regarding the television aspect of the endeavor. Dig it!

Deadline reports that TV, film, and comic book writer Mark Verheiden has been tapped to co-write with Akiva Goldsman the NBC TV series “The Dark Tower”. The project is part of a massive joint deal Universal Pictures and NBC Universal TV Entertainment signed back in September to turn Stephen King’s opus of best-selling novels — which have sold more than 30 million copies — into a feature film trilogy and a TV series, both of them creatively steered by the Oscar-winning team behind A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code.

As previously announced, Ron Howard will direct the series, which is envisioned as a bridge between the first and second movie in the trilogy. Universal Pictures will release the first, starring Javier Bardem as The Gunslinger, on May 17th, 2013.